Avoid Calais if you can, lorry drivers told
LORRY drivers are being ordered to avoid Calais because of confrontations with knifewielding immigrants who are trying to get to Britain.
Cross-Channel haulage firms are advising drivers to use other ports – including Cherbourg, Boulogne and Dunkirk – to transport goods to the UK to prevent migrants clambering into their vehicles.
Up to 2,000 foreigners – mainly Africans and Asians – have massed at Calais in a desperate bid to reach the UK where they will be able to claim benefits if they fail to find jobs.
The growing problem has led to calls for a new Sangatte-style refugee camp – a successor to the notorious Red Cross centre closed in 2002 that was used by 60,000 people as a springboard for illegal entry to the UK.
Truckers have told of desperate migrants armed with knives, iron bars and other weapons who want to get on UK-bound ferries.
At the weekend police launched a hunt for an Iraqi Kurd people-smuggler who pointed a pump-action shotgun at them as they arrested 15 illegal immigrants who were attempting to stow away in the back of a wagon parked in Calais.
And three Sudanese migrants suffered severe knife wounds during a vicious fight in the centre of the town over the right to a favourite spot to leap onto passing lorries.
The migrants lie in wait in groups at junctions where lorries have to slow down and stop. Aided by unscrupulous criminal gangs, they risk their lives trying to open the trailer doors and jump inside before the targeted vehicles drive on.
There are concerns that using other ports would mean migrant camps springing up in those towns. Meanwhile, many drivers cannot avoid Calais because they have fixedterm contracts with ferry companies that depart from there.
An Afghan man found dead in a shipping container in Essex was trying to escape a loan shark demanding more than £2 0,000, reports claim.
Meet Singh Kapoor, 0, is said to have fled Jalalabad 18 months ago with his family in a bid to escape the warlord who loaned him £ 2,000 to set up a clothing firm.
He was found dead alongside 35 other Afghan Sikhs inside the container that had just arrived at Tilbury Docks from Belgium.